The Wedding Game (4 page)

“I doubt it, he's as stubborn as an ox.” Prudence sounded resigned.

“Speaking of which,” Chastity said. “Father.”

Her sisters were all attention. “Is there something new?” Constance asked.

Chastity shook her head. “Not since you saw him yesterday. But he's not improving. His frame of mind . . . he's so depressed, and he just sits in his chair making inroads into the whisky decanter, staring into space, blaming himself for everything.”

“We need to take him out of himself,” Prudence said.

“That's what Jenkins said.”

“Easier said than done, though,” Constance stated.

“I had an idea on the way over here.” Chastity looked at her sisters in turn, her gaze a little hesitant, a tentative note in her voice. “I don't know what you'll think of it.”

“Well, tell us, love.” Constance leaned forward attentively.

“I was thinking that maybe a companion . . .” Chastity paused, unsure how to go on. What she was about to propose could upset her sisters, could seem like an act of disloyalty to their mother's memory. “A wife,” she said, making up her mind. “I thought, since we find wives and husbands for people all over town, maybe we could find a wife for Father. It's been nearly four years since Mother died. I don't think she'd mind. In fact—”

“In fact, she would applaud the idea,” Constance interrupted strongly. “It's a brilliant idea, Chas.”

Prudence was still silent, and they both looked to her. After a minute, she said slowly, “A woman of independent means would be perfect.”

“Or even better, a wife of more than independent means,” Constance said.

“But that's just as bad as Douglas Farrell,” Chastity protested. “It's so mercenary. I just thought he might enjoy a loving companion. She doesn't have to be rich.”

“No. No, of course not,” Prudence soothed. “But if perhaps she was, well, wouldn't that really gild the lily? Father wouldn't be thinking about money, and of course we wouldn't put someone in his way whom we didn't like. But . . .” She shrugged. “Money has its uses, Chas.”

“As if I didn't know that,” Chastity said. “So, you think I'm being too nice in my objections to Farrell's mercenary attitude?”

“Quite frankly, yes,” Prudence said, glancing at Constance, who nodded her agreement.

Chastity frowned into her sherry glass, then she said, “Very well. I thought you'd say that anyway. But you didn't meet him, don't forget. He's a dour, calculating, mercenary Scotsman.”

“But he's also a doctor,” Prudence reminded her. “He must have an interest in helping people. That should appeal to you, Chas.”

“It would if I thought it was true,” her sister said. “But he reminded me of some Victorian industrialist who couldn't care what tools he used to advance himself, or whom he trampled on to get his way. He seemed to think that so long as he was honest about his greed, there was nothing to object to.”

“You got all that in just a brief meeting in the National Gallery?” Constance asked in astonishment.

Chastity flushed slightly. “It does seem a little extreme,” she admitted.

“Maybe when you see him in an ordinary social situation you'll see him in a different light,” Prudence suggested.

“Well, we can't issue any invitations until we have some prospective brides,” Chastity pointed out. “Who do we know rich and desperate enough to enter into a mutually convenient business partnership under the guise of marriage?”

“At least we know they don't have to have beauty or brains,” Prudence said.

“Or even character,” Chastity said with a touch of acid. “We do know our client is not in the least fussy about such minor matters.”

“You've made your point, Chas.” Prudence rose to her feet. “We'd better go down to the drawing room, the first guests will arrive any minute.” She stuck her head around the bedroom door and called, “Gideon, we're going down. Hurry up.”

Her husband appeared immediately, fastening his cuff links. “Is Sarah going to be in the drawing room before dinner?”

“She's hoping so, but I said you'd have to decide.” Gideon had been Sarah's only parent for close to seven years and Prudence was still learning the moves of the stepparent dance—when it was appropriate to disagree or to make her own suggestions, and when to keep her opinions to herself.

“Do you think she's old enough?” he asked, turning back to get his coat.

“I would say so.”

“Then, by all means. I'll be down in a couple of minutes.”

The three women went to the drawing room. Sarah was hovering in the hall as they came down the stairs. “Can I stay for a little, Prue?”

“Yes, until we go in to dinner,” her stepmother said. “Your father said it would be all right.” She examined the girl, who, in anticipation of this permission, had donned her best party dress. The ink on her fingers rather spoiled the effect, but Prudence didn't think it worth mentioning. She adjusted a hair clip to catch up a drifting lock of hair behind Sarah's right ear. “Perhaps you could pass around the canapés.”

“Oh, yes, I could certainly do that,” Sarah agreed. She noticed Constance for the first time. “Hello, Aunt Con, I didn't hear you arrive. I must have been getting dressed.”

“Yes, I'm sure that must be it,” Constance agreed gravely. “Your ears are far too sharp to have missed my arrival otherwise.”

Sarah regarded her doubtfully for a second, as if trying to decide whether she was being made fun of, but then decided that it didn't matter if she was. She liked her newly acquired aunts. They never talked down to her, never excluded her, and were all amazingly competent when it came to tricky areas of homework. And they were great favorites with her father.

They went into the drawing room and Prudence cast a swift eye over the arrangements. All seemed in place.

“Who are our fellow guests, Prue?” Constance asked. “Anyone we don't know?”

“Only the Contessa Della Luca and her daughter, Laura. Everyone else you know.”

Chastity cocked her head. “They sound exotic, Prue.”

“The contessa was a client of Gideon's.”

“One you approved of,” Chastity put in with a hint of mischief, her habitual equanimity restored.

“Yes, Chas,” Prudence said with an answering laugh. “A simple matter of helping her reclaim an estate. She's English, was married to an Italian count, and was recently widowed, so she decided to come back to London with her daughter. I haven't met either of them, I only know what Gideon told me. He asked me to invite them . . . to introduce them socially. I don't think he's met the daughter. Gideon, have you met Laura Della Luca?” she asked as her husband entered the room.

“No, only her mother. She's a pleasant woman. I assume the daughter is the same.” He went to pour himself a whisky. “Can I get you all another sherry?”

The doorbell chimed and they heard Max Ensor's voice greeting the butler with easy familiarity. Max came into the drawing room, accompanied by Sarah, who announced, “The Right Honorable Max Ensor, Minister of Transport and Member of Parliament for Southwold.”

“Cheeky madam,” Max said, lightly tapping her cheek. Sarah ducked and grinned. She liked this newly acquired uncle as much as she liked her aunts.

“May I get you a drink, Uncle Max?”

“Whisky, please, Sarah.” He kissed his wife, then his sisters-in-law, and shook hands with his brother-in-law.

“Busy day?” Constance asked, smiling up at him as he perched on the arm of the sofa beside her.

“No, an indolent one,” he said, twisting one of her russet side curls around his finger. “I played billiards all afternoon.”

“And did you win?” Constance knew her husband was as competitive as she was.

“Need you ask?”

She laughed. “No, of course you did.”

The butler announced the first dinner guests and the time for intimate family chat was over.

Chastity dutifully devoted her attention to Lord Roderick Brigham, who was to take her in to dinner. It was no particular hardship, since she'd known him for years and he had an easy, accomplished manner. They performed the obligatory steps in the social dance automatically and were exchanging pleasantries about family matters when the Contessa Della Luca and her daughter were announced.

“Do you know them?” asked Lord Brigham in an undertone.

“No,” Chastity said. “Do you?”

“Only by repute. My mother met them at tea at Lady Wigan's the other day.”

Chastity glanced up at him, hearing something left unsaid. Lord Brigham's mother was a somewhat fearsome lady but an excellent judge of character. “And?” she asked with the ease of established friendship.

He lowered his head so that his mouth was close to her ear. “My mother found the contessa charming, but the daughter . . .” He let the sentence trail off.

“You can't stop there,” Chastity declared in an undertone, looking covertly at the new arrivals, who were being greeted by their host and hostess.

“A bore,” he whispered. “A priggish bore, to be exact.”

Chastity told herself it was uncharitable to be amused by gossip, but she couldn't help a stifled chuckle. She could hear the formidable Lady Brigham pronouncing the condemnation in her elegantly articulated tones, probably with her long nose lifted in disdain.

“We had better be introduced,” she murmured, and moved away from him towards the knot of people gathered by the fireplace.

“Contessa, may I introduce my sister, the Honorable Chastity Duncan,” Prudence said as her younger sister came up to them. “The Contessa Della Luca . . .” She waved an introductory hand between them.

Chastity shook the hand of a woman well into her middle years, coiffed in somewhat spectacular style with ostrich plumes swaying in her graying pompadour. Her gown was of blue and gold damask, bustled and tightly corseted, with leg-of-mutton sleeves. It was slightly old-fashioned but it suited the woman's rather stately figure. The diamonds at her throat and ears were magnificent.

“Welcome to London, Contessa,” she said, smiling warmly.

“Why, thank you, Miss Duncan. Everyone has been so kind.” Her voice had a slight hesitancy, the barest trace of an accent, not as if she was speaking a foreign language, Chastity thought, but more as if her English was overlaid by a language she was more accustomed to speaking.

“And this is Miss Della Luca,” Prudence said. “Miss Della Luca, my sister Chastity.”

Laura Della Luca looked down upon Chastity. She was very tall and thin, dressed in a high-collared, very decorous gown of dove gray that hung from her narrow shoulders as if from a clothes hanger. Her hair was severely parted in the center and drawn back over her ears in two neat, braided circles. Her gaze was supercilious. Her narrow mouth moved in the semblance of a smile. “Delighted,” she said in a voice that quite failed to express delight. “I am so unaccustomed to being called
miss.
” she said. “I am so much more comfortable with
signorina.
”

“We must try to remember that,” Prudence said with a smile that came nowhere near her eyes. “Foreign ways are so new to us.”

Chastity caught Gideon's eye. He seemed to be well aware that this particular guest was sailing a little close to the sharp edge of his wife's tongue. Not that anyone but Prudence's immediate family would be aware of it. Signorina Della Luca would be entirely oblivious of the darts of mockery that would puncture with unerring accuracy any attempts at pretension.

“Yes, I find the English are so poorly traveled,” the lady said. “Travel is so broadening for the mind.”

“Indeed,” Constance said with a smile very similar to her sister's. “How strange, then, that it should so often breed contempt for the natives of these backward lands.”

Max and Gideon exchanged looks that mingled reluctant amusement with a degree of desperation. Once their wives were up and running in this fashion, very little could stop them.

Chastity, however, came to the rescue. “Oh, you must tell me all about Italy,” she said. “My sisters and I spent some time in Florence with our mother, but it was a long time ago. Or it seems so,” she added. “You know Florence intimately, I'm sure.”

“Oh,
Firenze,
of course,” said the lady with a trill. “We have a villa just outside. I sometimes think that the Uffizi is my second home.”

“How fortunate for you,” Chastity said. “We were only able to spend a month there ourselves.”

“A month is long enough to get to know the gallery very well, Miss Duncan,” said the contessa with a pleasant smile.

“With due study, of course,” her daughter put in. “But I hardly think, Mama, that a tourist visit to
Firenze,
even for a month, can be any substitute for living there.”

“Dinner is served, Lady Malvern.” The sonorous tones of the butler brought a timely conclusion to the conversation and Gideon breathed again.

He offered his arm to the contessa. Max, at a nod from his sister-in-law, performed the same service for the signorina, and the party fell into couples, the procession moving in stately fashion across the hall and into the dining room.

Prudence had seated the contessa in the place of honor on Gideon's right. The signorina she had placed between a judge colleague of Gideon's, who sat on her own right, and Max. She was thus in close proximity to her guest. Fortunately, Chastity and Roddie Brigham sat opposite at the same end of the table, so there was some conversational relief. Constance, up at Gideon's end, would be unable to participate in any conversation at the far end of the table.

“Did Gideon do any of the cooking this evening, Prue?” Chastity asked her sister as she sat down.

“No, but he did choose the menu,” Prudence responded. She turned to the signorina. “My husband, Miss Della Luca, is a considerable chef.”

“Oh, really . . . how unusual.” Laura looked askance. “You would never find an Italian man in the kitchen. Most unmasculine.”

“Ah, yes,” Prudence said. “But the Italian character is perhaps a little different from the English. Englishmen are perhaps less concerned about their masculinity. It is perhaps more innate, would you not say, gentlemen?” She smiled at the men on either side of her.

“I think it's probably more to do with the type of cuisine,” Max suggested swiftly. “Pasta, as I understand it, is very time-consuming to create. Women, by the very nature of things, have more time at their disposal.”